English Library – Viewer Project
This project is submitted by Christian. French polishing really yields some great results doesn’t it? Let’s check it out:
“This is the finished piece, it’s a turnable English library (don’t know if the name is correct), it has hidden wheels on the bottom so it can be easily moved or turned.
The finish is stain, french polished shellac and bees wax. Hope you like it!”
John’s Holiday Project
Here’s a small round accent table that I made for my grandparents. It’s out of cherry and features a turned top & center post and carved legs. This is actually my first piece of furniture and only the second thing I’ve ever turned – the first thing was practice! I used an old 1950’s Shopsmith for the turning, A Delta tablesaw for dimensioning, Some rasps for the legs, chisels for the mortises and a handful of clamps for some of the glue-ups. There are several things I would do differently the second time around. But for a first go at it I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out. Thanks for the great site!
Walnut Side Table – Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from Lee in Austin who writes:
Thought you might like to take a look at the side-table I built out of Walnut. Not nearly as cool as the curves and floating top you made, but OK for a first table with mortise and tenon joints. Keep up the great show. We really enjoy both the content and presentation style.
I started out with rough Walnut that I picked up over the course of about six months. One board was 8/4 and three boards were 5/4. The boards were about 6 ft long and 5 in. wide. I dimensioned it with my Jet 6” deluxe jointer, DeWalt 13” planer and my SawStop. Legs ended up 2” x 2 1/8” x 23 1/4”, rails 4” x 14” (including tenon length) x 9/16” and the top 18 1/2” x 18 1/2” x 3/4”. After cutting the pieces to size, I used my Powermatic hollow-chisel mortiser to cut mortises into the legs. The legs were not exact squares so I paired them up (e.g. Mortise for back left leg connects with mortise for back right leg, mortise for back right leg connects with front right leg, …) so the relative distance from the outside surface of the leg to the rail was the same on each leg. I decided to use the 3/8” hollow chisel.
I planned for a 1/2” shoulder on the top and bottom of the tenons which started the mortise 1/2” from the top. After cutting the mortises, I laid out the legs with the rails to decide which board looked best with between certain legs and to mark my cuts. I ended up cutting a 1” tenon on each end of the rails. I made a cut-off sled so I could be as accurate as possible when cutting the tenons. I cut the shoulder on all four sides up against a stop block clamped to the sled. I just nibbled away the material checking the fit until I liked it.
Since I had the mortise pretty well centered on the legs I cut the end of each tenon to 45 degrees so the two tenons coming into a leg would not hit each other. I glued up two legs with a rail and then the other two legs with another rail. After these were clamped I added the other two rails and used enough clamps to ensure adequate pressure to close up each joint. Checking that all four legs were level and all joints were nice and tight, I left it to cook. The top is a glue up of 4 pieces of walnut that looked “right” together. I didn’t use biscuits or dowels in this glue up since the top is pretty small. I used yellow glue for all gluing processes.
The 4 pieces of walnut were jointed and planed on the top and bottom surface before glue up. The inside edges didn’t touch the jointer or planer. I ripped the boards on my SawStop and the pieces matched up exactly. I scraped the partially cooked glue to minimize the work after the clamps came off. I knocked off the hard edges from the legs and rails with a little oval sanding pad. One pad has something like 60 micron/30 micron and the other has 15 micron/5 micron. I worked down from 60 to 5 and it is really nice to the touch. I sanded and scraped after the base and top came out of the clamps. I used a block plane to put a small chamfer on the bottom of each leg (all four sides).
After this I was ready to start finishing. I love Tung Oil. Just seems to bring out the wood. I gave both the base and the top 2 coats of tung oil (all sides) with a bit of touch up hand sanding. Just enough to remove the nibs. I attached the top to the base with figure eight fasteners. After it was together, I applied some good furniture paste wax and buffed it out. This is what you see in the pictures of the final table. Go have fun making saw dust.
Chippendale Side Tables – Project of the Week
This week we have a real treat for you. Two of our viewers, Brian and Jorge both built Chippendale Side Tables that were modeled after David Marks’ design from Woodworks. Both projects turned out great! Let’s hear from Brian first.
“I have been a hobbyist woodworker for the last 5 or so years but mostly around the house stuff – paint grade built-ins, crown moulding, etc. After years of watching David Marks I decided it was time to see how hard it was to build a quality piece of furniture. I called up my dad (who taught me everything about woodworking that David and Norm didnt) and told him it was time to get serious. We went and got ourselves a planer and a bandsaw to complete my small shop and decided David’s Chippendale Side Table was as good a place to start as any. I had seen this episode of Woodworks years ago and vaguely remembered it. Luckily, I found a link from David’s site that walked me through enough of the steps to get this project finished.”
“Some details of the piece: it is made from 2 pieces of rough lumber- 8/4 Honduran Mahogany for the legs and 4/4 for the aprons and the frame & panel top. The panel is resawn and bookmatched – I got really lucky with the figure of this particular piece of mahogany. The aprons are attached to the legs with integral tenons and the top is simply glued to the base. Wenge accents (courtesy of my Dad’s meticulous work on his scroll saw) were glued in place and the whole thing was treated with General Finishes red mahogany stain and Arm-R-Seal.”
And now let’s hear what Jorge had to say:
“Like you, I am a big fan of WoodWorks and I have been fortunate to have taken two classes with the Great David Marks. The design for these tables is from one of the first Woodworks but I did change the table top. I used redwood burl veneer. For the first time ever I used the vacuum press (which I purchased more than a year ago). I think they look good and my wife and children like them. I have been woodworking for just a few years and truly I am not that good yet. Honestly, these pictures significantly over represent my abilities. The pictures were taken on my table saw covered with a white blanket.”
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